Well, miraculously the essay slipped out without too much anguish :) Actually, the writing process was a really good exercise for helping me to digest a whole load of reading materials that I have found rather insightful. Now with that behind me I have got my senses set on the upcoming 'Analytical Paper' that I will need to have ready by December 10th. This will be the place in which I present the conceptual and contextual framing of the work that I will be doing when I return to India. Fortunately, it has been taking shape quite nicely thanks to some good discussions with fellows, researchers, students and myself ;) I will, however, need a designated supervisor (and don't have one yet!)...
The emerging framework for my action inquiry is one that uses complexity, learning and power lenses to study processes of facilitating learning for change at multiple levels including (1) myself (as a reflective facilitator); (2) individuals in the organisation; (3) the organisation as a whole; (4) the communities with whom the organisation works.
Otherwise I experienced a rather wonderful sense of joy recently as our class had a kind of epiphany about its responsibility for actively shaping its own learning process. I've been fascinated with the way the course is unfolding. Simply observing and reflecting on this has made for a very profound learning process indeed! I also believe that it has reinforced some of my thinking about the rights-responsibilities debate that surfaces quite often back at Seva Mandir. Knowing that we had the right to shape the process and realising that it was our responsibility to shape our process; how do these two ideas complement each other? Does the one need the other? What is a right that is not realised?
I read something today that talked of the right of people to create "...authentic, caring, sustainable communities, to control their resources, to govern themselves, and guide their own evolution..." In what way is this not the people's responsibility? Claiming rights or taking responsibility? Is there any difference? Rights only become realised when people take responsibility. But does the process of claiming rights somehow short-circuit the deeper cultural change that occurs when people frame their process as one of taking individual and collective responsibility for co-creating a different reality? Is it merely some combination of the two? Why am I so much more concerned with responsibilities than rights? Is it because responsibility implies rights but rights don't imply responsibilities? If I have a right but don't make any effort to claim it, whose fault is that? Perhaps this seems decontextualised!?
Back to our class, if we had the right to shape our learning process but didn't take the responsibility, then what would it mean? And if we were not told that we had the right to shape our learning process but were only told that we had the responsibility for shaping it - then might that have triggered a more pro-active reaction from the outset? I recently posted the following on a new
wordpress blog that I am experimenting with (exploring the added functionality that might prove useful for my documenting my learning journey!) as part of my wonderings:
Is the language of responsibilities more powerful than the language of rights? Does it invoke more action on behalf of the would-be ‘right-claimers’? Is the whole ‘rights’ framework a ‘Northern’ construction that is being pushed on the rest of the world (along with so much else, like the modern Nation State) because asking the poor and marginal to take ‘responsibility’ for solving their problems sounds embarrassing when it is known that so many of their problems are perpetuated by the ‘North’? Are these questions harsh or unfair or am I onto something here?
I think that this is something we all need to think about very seriously: what is our responsibility in the world and are we honoring it?
